Tuesday, 27 May 2014

1.Main character. The over-riding reason you
shouldn’t read this novel (or maybe you already haven’t read it?) is Gerard
Mayes. Ger is an anti-hero. Men want to be him, women want to convert him. But
some of those anti-hero attributes should be enough to put you off.

2.Alpha male. If you only want to read about
dominant men then Peril isn’t for you. Ger is a slacker. Easily led by others.
But that’s not his self-image. He’s in total denial about how others see him.

3.Eye candy. Broad-shouldered, tall, athletic
and drop-dead gorgeous. He ain’t that. Ger is a bit short, a bit rounded, a
sandy-haired Scot who would be past his prime if he ever had one. But women –
some women – fall under his spell.

4.Fidelity. Faithful and dedicated to one
woman. Not Ger.
He’s having an affair with his wife’s best friend.

5.Clean-living. With a taste for a pint or several
and a best friend who has an expensive cocaine habit, Ger fails on this score
too.

6.High moral standards. Theopening chapter leaves no doubts about Ger’s standards. Even his
disposal of the body is shoddy.

7.Good health. The only good thing about his health
is Ger doesn’t smoke. If you could read his palm the lifeline wouldn’t be long.

8.Intelligence. Not half as smart as he thinks he
is. The anti-hero’s attempts to outwit his blackmailer and deceive the police
can only end in disaster.

9.Likeable. Well, I’ll let an unfortunate reader
have their say on this one. If I'm
honest, I wanted to punch the main character in the face. Repeatedly. I wished
him nothing but suffering … I wanted to buy a plane ticket to Dublin just to hunt down Ger--a fictional
character--and kick him soundly in the bollocks. Enough said.

10.Conclusive. It
should be all over for Ger at the end of Peril. Having left a trail of bodies
and destroyed lives in his wake, he should get his comeuppance. But he doesn’t.
Not quite anyway.

If you have
been fortunate enough not to read Peril then you might also like to not
read the sequel Getting Out of Dodge. I can similarly
recommend not reading anything else I’ve written.

Ger Mayes
doesn't stand out from the crowd and life is passing him by. He thinks
the world owes him a living but is held back by his own minor daily
misdemeanors. That is until he kills a mugger and is blackmailed by a
vicious Romanian crime gang. Ger keeps the secret from his wife, Jo, but
bares all to her best friend, his mistress Renée. He also trusts his
pal, high-wheeling drug dealer Tom, but gets dragged out of his depth
into a world of darker deception. In a deadly struggle to cast off the
gang's net, Ger becomes more entangled. Can he find a way out and save
those he loves?

Contemporary crime fiction set in Ireland, PERIL
is the picaresque story of an anti-hero. Men want to be him, women want
to redeem him. Ger's story is fiction, but his origins are real -
everyday folk living and working in a Dublin city center wracked with
organized begging, drugs and violent crime. It's not all leprechauns and
shillelaghs in Ireland.

Hollywood Stories is packed with wild, wonderful short tales about famous stars, movies, directors and many others who have been a part of the world's most fascinating, unpredictable industry!

What makes the book unique is that the reader can go to any page and find a completely engaging and illuminating yarn. Sometimes people won't realize that they are reading about The Three Stooges or Popeye the Sailor until they come to the end of the story. The Midwest Book Review says Hollywood Stories is, "packed from cover to cover with fascinating tales."

A professional tour guide in Hollywood, Stephen Schochet has researched and told thousands of entertaining anecdotes for over twenty years. He is also the author and narrator of two audiobooks Tales of Hollywood and Fascinating Walt Disney. Tim Sika, host of the radio show Celluloid Dreams on KSJS in San Jose has called Stephen," The best storyteller about Hollywood we have ever heard."

Monday, 19 May 2014

We all want to have success and happiness in every area of
our lives, as well as be a positive inﬂuence and inspiration to other people.
But too often, we get lost in our resolutions to do just that, having no idea
where to start or how to get there.

Your personality style and how it relates to the personality
styles of other people

How to most effectively learn new information, motivate
yourself, and others The two most powerful words in the English language and
how to put them to work for you

The best-and most effective-way to handle any conﬂict in
life

Mentor Me delivers what other books only promise: real world
strategies, techniques, and information that produce proven results!
Easy-to-implement directives and personal life illustrations combine to provide
readers with the pathway to success they have only previously dreamed about.
Begin reading and following the plan found in Mentor Me today and step-by-step,
you will transform your life!

Saturday, 17 May 2014

Would you risk death? Eight thousand candidates sign up for the Suicide Game. Only one can win. Each have their own reason for entering, and their desire to win isn't based on pride but a pure, unadulterated, need to survive, because the for the loser, it's death.

Wednesday, 14 May 2014

While
I could go blue in the face trying to convince you of all the wonderful
reasons to read Black Bear Lake, I thought, in fairness, I should be
honest about why you should NOT read it. And believe me, there are
plenty of reasons.

There are NO vampires in Black Bear Lake. None. Not a one. No Werewolves or Zombies, either. The only remedy I could come up with would be to make the Walleye morph into Vampires but it got tricky. I mean, how did they become like that? Usually, when you bite a fish, it’s already been fried up in a pan, so how do they get turned in the first place? And what if they transformed into bats when they were still underwater? Instant drowning! I even thought about maybe turning them into Werewolves until I realized how much shedding would be taking place in the lake and it just freaked me out. I can’t even handle hair in a bathtub drain.

It’s SAD! People die, animals die, baby deer get left alone in the woods without its mother, there’s cancer, there’s divorce…I mean, come on! Who wants to read that? Isn’t there enough pain and suffering in the world??

There are typos. I mean TYPOS! No matter that I read through the manuscript a bajjilion times. No matter that my editor, bless her, read through my manuscript a bajillion and one times. No matter that I had many, many friends, family and colleagues read through the manuscript. NO MATTER. At the end of the day, you can read through Black Bear Lake and still mark it up with a red pen. I’m smacking my forehead every other page.

It’s dated, old, practically the Dark Ages…there are no cell phones in my book. No iPods, no Kindles, no laptops. None! You might think it’s because the story takes place in the middle of the Northern Wisconsin woods. No service, right? Wrong. There are no personal devices because the bulk of the story takes place in 1983. No personal devices invented yet! In fact, 1983 was the first year cell phones (which were huge and weighed a ton) were commercially available. So, forget about the characters texting each other. They actually had to trudge around in the woods searching for lost kids! How boring is that…

There’s no soundtrack CD in the back of the book. But there should be!! There’s so much great music mentioned in Black Bear Lake! Like “Helpless” by Neil Young and “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd. Not to mention all the other great songs referenced! “Jack and Diane”, “Edge of Seventeen” and “Everything She Does Is Magic”… If you grew up in the 80’s, they will rock you! And if you didn’t, look them up…they will rock you!